Bicycle No Longer King of the Road in China

By Philip P. Pan, The Washington Post, Monday 12
March 2001; Page A01

BEIJING -- It was just a little tap, but Song Yuhua had had
enough. When the taxicab bumped her bicycle and sent her tumbling onto
the pavement, the 50-year-old factory worker refused to dust herself
off and pedal away.

Even after the cabby apologized and cars lined up behind him, Song
stood in the polluted haze of the evening rush hour and shook a finger
at the long column of frustrated motorists honking their horns at
her. You're not even supposed to be in this lane! she
cried. This is a bike lane!

And for a moment, a lone bicyclist appeared to stop the advance of the
automobile in China. But then a police officer intervened, Song
yielded and the cars began moving again, allowing China to resume its
relentless drive toward a future in which the long-beloved bicycle may
be reduced to a toy.

For nearly half a century, multitudes of cyclists packed the dusty
boulevards of Chinese cities, an image as evocative of the nation's
identity as the Great Wall or the giant panda. Now, after decades of
steady increases, the number of bicycles on China's streets has begun
to fall.

The turnaround is a small milestone in the rapid transformation of
Chinese life, one that provokes mixed feelings among Chinese about how
their country is changing as its economy grows. Applauded by those who
see the automobile as a symbol of progress, the bike's decline is
mourned by environmentalists and others who yearn for a time when the
streets were not so crowded and people were not so busy. And like so
much else in modern China, the dispute is colored by a touch of class
conflict.

Ordinary people like us can't afford cars, Song grumbled. We
ride bicycles.

The bicycle still has not gone the way of the rickshaw. It remains the
primary mode of transportation for millions, and there are nearly
twice as many bicycles in China -- 540 million -- as there are people
in the United States. But riding one is more of a hassle than ever.

Cars rule the roads now, spewing exhaust into cyclists' faces, pushing
them into crowded side lanes and striking them with startling
frequency. Housing reform has led people to move farther from their
jobs, making bicycle commutes increasingly impractical. And modern
young women choosing skirts instead of pants are giving up their bikes
for rapidly expanding bus and subway lines.

Less than a decade ago, residents of Beijing mounted their bicycles
for 60 percent of all trips in the city, according to Chinese traffic
studies. Today, the figure is down to 40 percent. Farther south, in
Shanghai and Guangzhou, it has dropped to as low as 20 percent.

It's not the same anymore, sighed Yeh Nong, 43, a government
worker browsing in one of Beijing's last used-bicycle shops. When I
was young, we used to spend the weekends riding through the city to
the Summer Palace. It was a wonderful feeling. Now, riding a bicycle
is more dangerous. And the air is terrible. When you get home, your
nose and mouth are black with soot. Who wants to do it anymore?

Even the saleswoman, Bai Yunxia, 39, acknowledged that her products
are less useful than before. China has changed so much. Everything
is faster. You can't sit around and drink tea all day anymore. So a
lot of people don't have time for a bicycle, either.

Bai takes the subway to work. She said her parents could commute by
bicycle because their employers, state factories, provided their
family an apartment near work. But many companies don't do that
now, she said. Anyway, I like living in the suburbs.

China's fascination with the bicycle began in the late 19th century,
when two Americans pedaled from Constantinople to Peking on a pair of
Humber bicycles with diamond-pattern frames. Crowds greeted them in
village after village, describing the strange vehicle as a foreign
horse and a little mule that you drive by the ears and kick in
the sides to make him go.

Several years later, China's last emperor, the boy Pu Yi, ordered gaps
cut into the high thresholds of the Forbidden City so he could ride
his bicycle unimpeded through the palace grounds. But the masses did
not begin to buy bicycles until after the 1949 Communist Revolution,
often receiving a government subsidy to do so. Families considered the
bicycle a prized possession; women sometimes refused to marry men who
did not own one. And when China opened its economy to market forces in
1979, bicycle ownership soared.

But bicycle production has been falling since 1995, and almost all the
bikes made in China now are exported. Barely 1 million were produced
for sale here in 1999, compared with more than 30 million just five
years earlier, according to government statistics.

At the same time, China has been promoting car ownership to boost the
nation's auto industry and give the country a more modern image. Car
sales are up 15 percent a year. In Beijing alone, the number of cars
has nearly tripled to 1.6 million since 1993.

But because road construction has not kept pace, the result has been a
traffic mess that makes the Capital Beltway at rush hour look like a
walk in the park. Cars trying to escape gridlock sneak into the bike
lanes. Cyclists dash through intersections, dodging traffic. Chinese
engineers like to tell stories about Western traffic experts who
arrive brimming with solutions only to depart, shaking their heads in
despair.

More often than not, city leaders have sided with the cars. In
Guangzhou, they tried to outlaw bikes from downtown completely in
1993, but a popular outcry led to a partial ban instead. In Shanghai,
there are plans to force bicycles out of the city center by 2010, and
most major streets are already off limits during rush hour.

Even in Beijing, home to 11 million bicycles, more than any other city
in the world, police are experimenting with a ban on a jammed street
about a mile northwest of the Forbidden City. An officer there orders
bicyclists to dismount; they often respond with colorful curses.

These roads used to be ours, said Du Xiaoying, 40, sneaking
down the street on her black Flying Pigeon bicycle. Now, the cars
have taken over. They drive too fast. They even park in our
lanes. There's nothing we can do.

Traffic accidents are up sharply, with the number of fatalities rising
by 70 percent in the past decade to more than 83,000 last year, making
China's roads among the world's deadliest. Studies estimate that about
a third of those killed are bicyclists; no one wears a helmet in
China.

Naturally, the bicyclists blame the people driving cars. But the
drivers insist the bicyclists are reckless, pointing out they do not
need a license or a traffic-safety course to ride a bike.

I've never hit a bicycle, but they hit me all the time,
complained cabby Liu Jianshu, 38, as a bicyclist careered across three
lanes of traffic in front of him. A lot of these people, they're
living in the past. They just go wherever they want, no matter what
the rules are, because they could do that before.

Like many drivers, Liu has no patience for bicycle nostalgia. What
kind of country would we be if we were all still riding bicycles? This
is progress. This is development, he said. Who wants to ride a
bicycle when you can drive a car?

Many Chinese agree. A recent survey in 20 cities by the Association of
Chinese Customers found a third of urban families plan to buy a car
within five years. Another study found most people consider knowing
how to drive a car to be one of three basic and necessary skills in
modern Chinese society, along with the ability to speak English
and use a computer.

Such attitudes alarm environmentalists. They warn that if the
percentage of the population owning cars in China reaches Western
levels, there would be more automobiles here than in the rest of the
world combined. Air pollution in many Chinese cities is already
several times above World Health Organization standards. It, and
cigarette smoking, make lung disease the leading cause of death in
China.

Problems like this have led many of China's leaders to a new
appreciation of the bicycle, said Liu Xiaoming, one of the nation's
leading traffic engineers. It's clean. It saves energy. It's good
for people's health. And it's more reliable than public
transportation, he said. We can't get rid of the bicycle
completely even if we tried.